Indirect Statement

Indirect statement noun clauses have two features:

	A verb in the governing clause with the notion of telling, knowing, realizing, etc..
	Infinitive verb in the indirect statement clause with an accusative subject.

An indirect statement is the second-hand telling of a direct statement. For example, "Caesar built a bridge." is a direct statement that would be expressed with a simple indicative verb in Latin. An indirect version of this would be, "The consul said that Caesar had built a bridge." The indirect version would be expressed with an accusative + infinitive construction. The indirect statement then acts as the direct object of the verb of saying (i.e. as a syntactic equivalent for the word "statement").

Here are some examples (with the indirect statement clause underlined):

Apollo promittit se Quintum curaturum esse, "Apollo promisses that he (Apollo) will take care of Quintus". Since the subject of the main clause and the indirect statement are the same, the accusative reflexive pronoun is used as the subject of the infinitive of the indirect statement.

Gaius dixit se Capuam iter facere, "Gaius said that he had made the journey to Capua"

ei quibus Quintus in via occurrit negaverunt se parentes eius vidisse, "those whom Quintus met on the road denied that they had seen his parents".

Quintus cognovit parentes suos Venusia discessisse, "Quintus realized that his parent had died at Venusia.

Infinitives do not express true time, but only aspect, i.e. whether the action of the infinitive is complete, incomplete, or future relative to the action of the verb the infinitive is dependent upon. It is for this reason that the only tenses to exist for the infinitive are the present, future and perfect:

Tense of the Infinitive	Relative Time of that tense
Perfect	Time Before
Present	Same Time
Future	Time After

Unlike with the dependent subjunctive, there will be no change to the infinitive in Latin based upon the tense sequence of the governing verb (although a change will be necessary in English):

Time of the Main Verb	Indicative Tense in the Main Clause	Example Verb	Infinitive Tense in the Indirect Statment
			Time before main verb - "He did this."	Same time as main verb - "He does this."	Time after main verb - "He will do this."
Primary Sequence	Present	dicit, "he says"	perfect infinitive "he did this"	present infinitive "he does this"	future infinitive he will do this"
	Perfect with "have"	dixit, "he has said"
	Future	dicet, "he will say"
	Future Perfect	dixerit, "he will have said"
Secondary Sequence	Imperfect	dicebat, "he was saying"	perfect infinitive "he had done this"	present infinitive "he did this"	future infinitive he would do this"
	Simple Perfect	dixit, "he said"
	Pluperfect	dixerat, "he had said"